In Glenn Patterson’s colourful novel about John DeLorean’s infamous, gull-winged sports car manufactured in Northern Ireland, the enigmatic entrepreneur-engineer dreams of seeing his futuristic creation in a movie. Of course, the DMC-12 would go on to become one of the most famous automobiles in cinema, as Doc’s time machine in Back to the Future. But by then, the DeLorean Motor Company was bankrupt.
If anyone can tell the curious DeLorean story in Northern Ireland it’s Patterson, who has been deftly weaving the country’s social history into novels and screenplays for some time now. In Gull, we see DeLorean’s increasingly bizarre undertaking through the eyes of his fish-out-of-water American fixer and a proud female factory worker – a nice device. The characters are painted with the broad brushstrokes of a film treatment but the narrative is sufficiently strong. As Patterson’s author’s note says: “I made this all up, apart from the bits you just couldn’t.”
